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Defense Bill Legalizes US Propaganda

June 11, 2012

A new feature in the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act would legalize U.S. government propaganda directed at the American people, with the belief that successful wars require domestic acceptance, writes Lawrence Davidson.

By Lawrence Davidson

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is misnamed, since it has less to do with defense than offense. The offensive it wages is not just against a growing list of alleged enemies of the United States but also, from a constitutional perspective, against the rights of American citizens and residents.

Major parts of the legislation are based on the assumption that key legal protections for individuals are incompatible with the requirements of national security. The result is that Americans are now caught between “the terrorists” and the authoritarian propensities of their own government.

The NDAA specifically Section 1021(b)(2) has already institutionalized the U.S. military’s ability to indefinitely detain, without charge or trial, citizens and non-citizens alike. This is a serious abuse of power. The monarchical authority our Founders sought to escape practiced such a “disappearance” of people. So have the contemporary dictatorships that Washington has so consistently supported.

Now Americans, apparently having no patience or imagination to seek routes to security compatible with our own legal principles, are ready to illegally imprison without recourse those whom we (rightly or wrongly) fear.

A recent decision by New York Appellate Court Judge Katherine Forrest suspended this part of the NDAA, after a lawsuit brought against the Act by seven journalists and anti-war activists. The ruling came as an embarrassing surprise to “Justice” Department lawyers defending indefinite detention.

What will now follow will be an effort to overturn or minimize Judge Forrest’s ruling because it “restrains future military operations” that might be ordered by the commander in chief during wartime. At first the government asserted the judge’s ruling applied only to the seven plaintiffs, but she quickly clarified her ruling to make it plain that her ruling “enjoined enforcement of Section 1021(b)(2) against anyone.”

The government lawyers will certainly appeal Forrest’s decision. If necessary, they will declare to the Supreme Court the necessity of eroding the very Constitution they are sworn to uphold, and so presently myopic is that court of last resort, that it will almost certainly agree.

However, the negative potential of the NDAA does not stop with the issue of indefinite detention. It has now come to light that the 2013 version of the Act (passed by the House but yet to be taken up by the Senate) allows the State Department and Defense Department to direct the same kind of massive propaganda campaigns here in the U.S. that are presently waged as part of American war efforts in foreign lands.

This latest maneuver is the bipartisan work of two congressmen: Mac Thornberry (Republican) of Texas and Adam Smith (Democrat) of Washington State. Both claim that current law, which prohibits these government agencies from propagandizing within the U.S., “ties the hands of America’s diplomatic officials, military and others by inhibiting our ability to effectively communicate in a credible way.”

What of Public Discourse?

Thornberry and Smith’s action raises the question of the role of public discourse. Of course, the discourse coming from government has always been skewed. Yet up to this point there has been legislative recognition that the government should not lie to or manipulate its own people the way it does with foreign audiences.

It is this distinction that Thornberry and Smith would eliminate by writing into the institutional job-descriptions of the State and Defense Departments the mission of selling U.S. government foreign policy and its accompanying wars to Americans through massive advertising campaigns.

Of course Thornberry and Smith do not see their effort as sponsoring ever more sophisticated efforts at misinformation. These two congressmen have obviously swallowed whole the official patriotic storyline and now have concluded that everyone else must do likewise.

This is what happens when elected officials fail to distinguish between propaganda and “communicating in a credible way.” Their gullibility is not a good sign. It suggests that what often does not work in foreign lands is quite likely to work well here at home.

People in places like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan know that the U.S. is or was in their countries as a military conqueror. A few might approve of that position, but we can safely say that most do not. The mayhem that surrounds conquest and occupation is so immediate, so close to home, that the millions of American dollars spent for planted news stories and other forms of misrepresentation are not going to counter that reality and thus improve the U.S. image and win wars.

However, when and if the State and Defense Departments launch professional misinformation campaigns here in the U.S., success is all but guaranteed. That is because there is no countervailing context in which most Americans, including most in Congress, can judge the psychological warfare message.

The violence and brutality of invasion, occupation and resistance do not impact the local lives of Americans (except the families of U.S. soldiers who are always considered heroes), and so you are left with a relentlessly repeated patriotic message from sources you have been taught to trust.

It is an interesting and certainly significant fact that although the propaganda campaigns of the State and Defense Departments are presently prohibited by law in the homeland, a comparable process of government misinformation takes place nonetheless. [For a historical perspective on this kind of domestic propaganda, see Robert Parry’s Lost History.]

Neither the State nor the Defense Departments could have done better than the administration of George W. Bush in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Washington’s consistent lying, abetted by compliant media allies, paved the way for a popularly supported bloody debacle. In Iraq, the same propaganda, contextualized as it was by widespread violence, brought forth skepticism and disgust.

Whatever the record of such efforts abroad, there seems little doubt that Bush’s success in 2003 now inspires the governments “information operatives” to seek legal authority to wage professionally designed “giant marketing campaigns” to effectively sell the nation’s foreign policy and wars to its own citizens. Hence the bipartisan efforts of Thornberry and Smith.

It should be kept in mind that government bureaucracies, be they civilian or military, are not places of free discourse. They are “get with the mission and follow orders” environments. While their representatives, drawn as they are from the American public, might give lip service to democracy, honesty and meaningful discussion, they really do not practice these tenets and probably do not believe in them either.

That is why, in an era when money stands for free speech and bellicose conservatives own more and more of the media, Thornberry and Smith’s legislation appears obvious and logical. If passed into law, it will become the capstone of an ongoing process that is turning public discourse into a poisoned well of indoctrination.

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14 comments for “Defense Bill Legalizes US Propaganda”

Brian Wood

June 11, 2012 at 11:28 am

Makes it easy to assume everything they say is lies.

Blackbird

June 12, 2012 at 9:04 am

Like this is any different than the BS mainstream media feeds us and has been feeding us for years. Big business controls our gov’t and controls our mainstream media & has for quite a while. This just seeks to legalize the lying they have been getting away with.

Like Israel, the US too has realized that internet has become a forceful tool to expose its propaganda lies.

In 2010, Israelâ€™s premier policy strategy group, the Reut Institue, submitted its report to Benji Netanyahuâ€™s government â€“ warning that â€˜anti-Semite and self-hating Jewishâ€™ organizations and individuals are running a successful campaign to â€˜delegitimizeâ€™ the Zionist entity.

Speaking of propaganda, I hope Robert Parry will do an article setting the record straight about Bush Sr. (CIA, Letelier, Iran-Contra, Panama, Iraqgate, Passportgate, etc) in a review of HBO’s upcoming hagiography, “41.”

Frances in California

June 13, 2012 at 8:14 pm

Parry has written about these things, in his book “Secrecy and Privilege”.

Ted

June 15, 2012 at 1:51 pm

I know that, and how Parry has scores of articles on the Bush Family. I just hope there is one to specifically take on the whitewashing of ol’ “41” in the new documentary, so that it can be passed around the web. Already I’ve seen reviews in even “The Daily Beast” saying how H.W. is such a “lovely man.” Right…the former CIA Director who still claims he was out of the loop on Iran-Contra…and on and on…

Ted

June 15, 2012 at 1:59 pm

This is the start of a rehabilitation campaign of the Bush Family image. Do you think it’s a coincidence that this HBO hagiography is being aired the same week that Jeb has been saying how his father is his hero and as perfect as a man can be? He’s been making statements such as these that imply he is like his father and Reagan, while using words to distance himself from his brother. So what if he is being critical of the Republicans right now. It’s only to make himself look better to moderates (and rewrite history too, so that Reagan looks moderate, even though he is the spiritual father of the current GOP). Jeb isn’t holding office and he isn’t campaigning, and 2016 is a long ways away. So he can say whatever he wants right now to appear moderate and reasonable, and therefore unlike his brother and the radical side of the party that W. is associated with.

Ted

June 12, 2012 at 2:11 am

…and maybe also in terms of the family history, including the cover-up of Prescott’s scandal around WWII…and how this pattern has continued through the generations, which Mr. Parry has written about it.

Ted

June 12, 2012 at 2:06 pm

And something about the millions received from Rev. Moon.

Blackbird

June 12, 2012 at 9:08 am

Like this is any different than the BS mainstream media feeds us and has been feeding us for years. Big business controls our govâ€™t and controls our mainstream media & has for quite a while. This just seeks to legalize the lying they have been getting away with.

Bea

June 12, 2012 at 9:51 am

More and more, the Feds make war on their own citizens — the very people who are funding their atrocities.
Their agents gate-rape us at airports. Soldiers often rape women — and some men, too — when they conquer a place.
They have already “indefinitely detained” American citizens (Jose Padilla and Bradley Manning) w/o formal charges or trial.
And they are killing us, too, via drone attacks, the way they do our “enemies” overseas (enemy being anyone who objects to the US’s occupation of his country).
When the king of England attacked the colonies, besieging Boston after its Tea Party and closing its port (ie, trying to starve Bostonians into submission), everyone recognized his response as an act of war. He was treating Boston as he would a French or Spanish city. Shortly thereafter, a shooting war broke out.
At what point do we defend ourselves from the war the Feds have launched against us? At what point do we recognize that these gutless politicians consider us the enemy every bit as much as they do Al Qaeda?